Holy Communion For The Abused And Disillusioned

This is a simple communion devotional given at a gathering devoted to concerns about corruption and abuse in the Church:

Scripture text: Acts 8:26-35:

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

Thus far the reading of God's Most Holy Word.

Can you find your way to God if you have been abused?

Many have done so. The Ethiopian eunuch had suffered a sexual violence so horrific that any man would shudder to think of it, and some would rather die than experience it.

Can you find your way to God in a corrupt church controlled by evil men?

Many have done so. Acts 8:27 says that this eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship. What would he have found there? At the temple he would have seen a sign in Latin and Greek warning Gentiles like him to proceed no further under penalty of death. He would have heard the shouts of greedy vendors who no doubt set their tables up again soon after Jesus had driven them out. Murderers led temple worship - foul fiends of darkness who had delivered Jesus up to Roman crucifixion.

How can one find God in a place so spiritually decadent that, as Jesus prophesied, it would soon be destroyed under divine wrath, and not one stone would be left upon another? By God’s mercy, the eunuch extracted from that depraved house of worship an ancient holy book with truth about Jesus Christ. He could not understand it. But in the mist of his confusion he read these words: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth. The eunuch wondered, “Who is the prophet talking about?”

Philip explained that it was about Jesus, who stepped into our corrupt world and took upon himself its most severe abuse: death by torture. Jesus bore the wrath of man, but much more important, for us and our salvation, he bore the wrath of Trinitarian God. God, in love, bore the penalty for our sin against him.

For those of you who have been abused, remember that Jesus is no stranger to brutal treatment. Poet Edward Shillito wrote,

The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak.
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne.
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak.
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

For those of you who have been the abusers, know this: if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Songwriter Bob Bennett wrote,

There are those who are among us who believe they are not worthy.
We offer you the Word of Life, we bid you come and dine
Upon the mercy we have tasted, and the love given so freely.
Come take your place at table now; Jesus in our time.

And for all who have grown weary and cynical because of false brothers, wolves in shepherds’ clothing, corrupt and compromised fellowships - fix now your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He committed no sin, nor was any guile found in his mouth. Jesus is holy. And he swears by himself to render his loved ones holy as he conforms them to his image through sorrow and joy. You who love Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected Son of God, come now, partake of bread of wine as you remember him in reverent worship. Let us pray.

Lord God, by your mercy, remove every impediment of sin, confusion, disillusionment and unbelief, and shine the light of your Son so brightly in our faces that we can do no more than fall down before you and give thanks. Amen.

Evangelicals Are Wrong Concerning The Most Important Thing About You

I disagree with a quote so widely accepted in evangelicalism that I’m beginning to wonder if I am the lone living Christian who opposes it. Hating my isolation, I write now in hope of persuading somebody to dismiss with me a thoughtless cliché that has gained creedal status in our tradition.

I refer to the words of A. W. Tozer: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” If you don’t go to church or listen to Christian radio or read Christian literature then you may not know what I’m talking about. But if you do those things then you are probably familiar with that quote. It is regularly cited with warm approval in Christian settings.

But what comes into my mind when I hear it is, “Oh no – they have not read C. S. Lewis’s ‘The Weight of Glory’!” Or worse, they have read it and disagreed with it. If you have not read “The Weight of Glory,” please stop reading this and go read that. Or listen to a recording online. After you take in Lewis’s sermon you won’t want to read anything else soon after. You will need time to ponder, weep, rejoice perhaps, and bow the knee to God.

Welcome back.

Near the beginning of “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis says:

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us.

There it is. The most important thing about you is not what you think of God but what he thinks of you.

There are individuals who have accurate thoughts about God but it does them no good. Demons are orthodox monotheists. James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one. Good for you. The demons believe that too, and shudder.” One of the first affirmations of Jesus’ identity came from a demon: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). The devil was so knowledgeable about God’s redemptive plan in Christ that he tried to derail it (Mark 8:31-33). I would bet that the devil could even explain subtle differences between infra- and sub-lapsinarianism-- whereas as I, a Bible major, forgot what both words mean a long time ago.

Don’t get me wrong. It is good to have right thoughts about God. But Lewis is certainly correct in saying that what is infinitely more important is what God thinks about us.

And that is a problem. How can we possibly know what God thinks of us? We have ready access to our own minds, but “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Romans 11:34). The Bible quotes God as saying, “My thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). Job’s friend Zophar asked him, “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know?” (Job 11:7-8).

Faced with the difficulty of discerning the mind of God, many people simply project larger-than-life images of themselves onto deity and assume that he is like them. Psalm 50:21 exposes this folly. God says to the wicked, “These things you did and I kept silent. You thought I was just like you.” Few sins are more beguiling than that of extrapolating our corruptions onto God and convincing ourselves that he is as indulgent of our behavior as we are. I see other people do this all the time. How do I know I’m not doing it myself?

We ought not underestimate our ability to self-deceive. The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Saul the Pharisee thought he was doing good when he tried to extinguish an upstart religious sect. His conscience affirmed him, and his understanding of Scripture made it clear that God was on his side. But then Jesus knocked him down and turned him around with such compelling force that he became a zealous advocate of the Way he once despised. His proud opposition became his deepest shame, and drove him to acknowledge that he was the worst of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

So how do you know that you are not now as deceived as he once was? How do you know that you are not - from the perspective of the Eternal and Holy – a foul villain and a moral outrage?

I’m afraid there is objective data to suggest that we view ourselves much more highly than we should. In 1997, U S News and World Report asked a thousand people, “Who do you think is most likely to go to heaven?” Celebrities were ranked. Sixty-six percent thought Oprah Winfrey was going there. Michael Jordan was close at 65%. Bill and Hillary Clinton came in at around 50%. Dead last was O J Simpson at 19%. First overall among popular figures was Mother Teresa, whom 79% of respondents tagged as heaven-bound.

But there was one obscure, unknown person who clobbered Mother Teresa in the ratings. And that was...whoever was responding to the survey! When asked, “Are you going to heaven?” 87% said yes. That is, the average person felt more secure about his favorable standing before God than that of any public figure, sinner or saint, on planet earth.

If you listen to modern evangelical preaching, you would never guess this tendency to “think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think” (Romans 12:3). Today we are told the opposite – that we beat ourselves up with guilt and shame and need to learn how to rest in the confidence that God is tickled pink with us. A few days ago I heard a preacher say to his congregation, “You’re one of those that says, ‘Pastor, if you knew what I’ve done or where I’ve been, what’s gone on in my life – God could never love someone like me.’” I've heard that line countless times from dozens of preachers in the last few decades. Preachers today assume that their listeners are racked with guilt, doubtful of God’s love, and in desperate need of assurance. But I'm afraid that far more people are racked with pride, presumptuous of God’s love, and in desperate need of warning.

The songs we sing in church attack self-doubt like it was sin, and assure us that God has only nice thoughts about us. A couple Sundays ago at my church we sang,

What if I saw me the way that You see me?
What if I believed it was true?
What if I traded this shame and self-hatred
For a chance at believing You?

Wait a minute. The lyrics assume that my shame and self-hatred are bad things, and that they can be traded for a reassuring faith that God sees me in a favorable light. That is not biblical. In the Bible, better men than I hated themselves more, and felt far deeper guilt. Righteous Job, confronted by God, said, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). The prophet Isaiah saw the Lord and said, “Woe is me – I’m ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5). St. Peter said to Jesus, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). St. Paul said, “I know that nothing good dwells in me” (Romans 7:18). St. John said, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man” (Revelation 1:17).

I cannot for the life of me understand how “seeing myself the way God sees me” could be a comforting rather than dreadful thought. I'd prefer not to know what he sees. God sees all, and he is holy.

Despite my sin and that of my fellow congregants, modern evangelicalism beats into our heads the notion that "God is for us, not against us!". In one popular Hillsong worship anthem we sing (over and over and over again),

You are for me, not against me, I am who you say I am!

What pops into my mind when I hear that monstrously presumptuous affirmation are Bible passages where God says the opposite. For example:

Jeremiah 50:31: “Behold, I am against you, O proud one," declares the Lord God of hosts, "for your day has come, the time when I will punish you."

Psalm 34:16: The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

1 Samuel 12:15: If you will not listen to the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the command of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you.

God isn't for everybody. He is for some people and against others. The Bible says that many, many times. The most important thing about you is which category you're in, and that is something God knows for sure and that you can be deceived about. Therefore be humble. Quiver. Doubt yourself. Repent of known sin, and beg God to reveal to you those sins which alienate him but have yet to alight on your malfunctioning conscience. Presume nothing, but cast yourself upon the mercy he has made available through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. I don't know, right now, if God is for you or against you. But I do know that God "opposes the proud, yet gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). Be the kind of person to whom he gives grace rather than the kind of person he opposes. Remember that his evaluation of you is the only one that matters. As for you, well, it would be better to fear you're going to hell and wind up in heaven than to assume you're going to heaven and wind up in hell.

When God Gets Mad At You

(The text of yesterday's sermon)

Scripture texts: Deuteronomy 3:23-27; Deuteronomy 32:48-52; Hebrews 12:5-6. (Full Scripture texts are at the end of this message.)

Three times in the book of Deuteronomy Moses says, “The Lord was angry with me.” We read one of those verses in Deuteronomy 3:26. The other occurrences are in Deuteronomy 1:37 and 4:21. "The Lord was angry with me... The Lord was angry with me... The Lord was angry with me."

Is it possible that God is angry with you? Right now, today, this morning, is God mad at you?

I know that many people answer emphatically, “No! God is not mad at you.” I heard that for the first time 35 years ago, when a worship leader said to everyone in the sanctuary, “God’s not mad at you.” I have heard it many times since. Joyce Meyer has a book by that title: God’s Not Mad At You. A preacher on WMBI, Steve Brown, has a ministry called "Key Life." If you go to his website, right under the logo you will find the words, “God’s not mad at you.” In preparation for this sermon I googled that phrase and found that many preachers have sermons with that title. And then, just a few weeks ago, my best friend from college messaged me saying, “We have a worship director who will occasionally tell entire groups of people that God is not mad at them.”

What should you do if you are in a worship service and the speaker says, to everyone, “God is not mad at you”?

I don’t recommend doing what was done at a large public gathering on March 27th of 2022. At that gathering comedian Chris Rock said something that actor Will Smith disagreed with, and Smith went up and slapped him hard across face. Don’t do that. Be like Jesus instead. When Peter spoke words that Jesus disagreed with, it is not recorded that Jesus slapped him hard across the face. (He called him “Satan,” but he did not slap him, as far as we know. Matthew 16:23.) We are a nonviolent people. When Peter himself got violent one time on Jesus’ behalf Jesus said to him, “Put your sword away. Those who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52). But though we do not draw a sword of steel when one of God’s representatives speaks heretical words from the pit of hell, we do unsheathe a spiritual sword, the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17).

That is what I want to do this morning: draw a biblical sword and with it stab to death a Satanic teaching woefully prevalent in many pulpits to the effect that God is never mad at people. Does the Bible say that God gets mad at people? Yes it does – hundreds of times, both Old Testament and New Testament. In the Old Testament, God’s wrath is mentioned by name nearly 600 times, and many more times than that it is referred to though the word itself does not appear. But the most arresting depictions of God’s anger are not in the Old Testament. They’re in the New Testament, and still future to us. God’s anger was expressed in the past, it is being expressed in the present, and it will be expressed in the future - for all eternity, so long as there is sin. It is quite possible then, that in this room, there is someone, or several people, with whom God is angry indeed.

I do not exempt myself. I am no better than Moses. God forbid that I should consider myself above Moses. Moses, after all, was granted a glimpse of the glory of God in Exodus 33. And when his siblings rebelled against him, God said, When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face.(Numbers 12:6-8).

God does not speak to me face to face, I don’t think he does that with any of you either. If God was angry with Moses, how dare we think that he would never be angry with us? Who do we think we are?

Do you know why God became angry with Moses? Ultimately it was for the same reason that God ever gets angry with anyone. Sin. We all know people who get angry for no good reason - people who are touchy, irritable, easily provoked. You have to walk on eggshells around them because they’re always ready to go off about something. God isn’t like that. The Bible says that God is love. It says many times that he is slow to anger. It says that he is merciful and compassionate. But precisely because God is love he must get angry. For example, because God loves all races he gets angry over racism. Because God loves children he gets angry when they are abused and exploited. Psalm 17:11 says that God displays his wrath every day. That is because there is sin every day.

Now with regard to the specifics of Moses’ sin, there are elements worthy of a deep dive into the Scriptures, because they provoke questions that have captivated the minds of Bible scholars. But I am not going to dive deep into those waters now, because the details would consume the rest of this sermon, and my purpose is more general. I will just say this much. In Numbers 20, God tells Moses to speak to a rock to draw out water for the people who are complaining of thirst. Moses says to the people, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then he strikes the rock twice and water pours out.

Some find significance in the fact that Moses struck the rock when God told him to speak to it. Others think the problem lay in the fact that Moses said, “Must we bring you water out of this rock?”, and they infer that Moses and Aaron were claiming credit for that miracle rather than attributing it to God. There are other suggestions as well. What is not in dispute is this: in some way, Moses dishonored God before the Israelites. That’s what the text says. Numbers 20:12: the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

Then, 48 chapters later, in the next book over, Deuteronomy, when Moses was about to die, God reminded him of this incident. Moses, despite all his pleadings and his earnest desire, would not be permitted to cross the Jordan and plant his feet on the soil of the Promised Land. He would only get to see it from a mountaintop far away. Deuteronomy 32:50-51 God says:

There on the mountain that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites. Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.

Among the conclusions that can be drawn from these sober events are these two: Moses, righteous as he was, angered God. Secondly, there were consequences to Moses’ wicked actions. Irrevocable consequences that were directly enforced by an angry, loving, holy God.

Sometimes we may have the mistaken impression that being forgiven means suffering no consequences. This is often indicated with the kind of rhetoric we hear that says “When you’re forgiven, the past is past! It is completely forgotten, and you’re given a clean slate. And the word ‘justified’ means ‘just-as-if-I’d' never sinned.’” But biblically there is a much different nuance. Consider King David.

When David took Uriah’s wife Bathsheba to bed with him, had Uriah killed, and then was confronted with his sin, he confessed it and repented of it. Was he forgiven for his sins? Yes, he was. That’s what the Bible says. In 2 Samuel 12:13, when David said to the prophet Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord,” Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin.”

Wonderful. Great. Perhaps you can imagine David breathing a deep sigh of relief as he wipes away his tears. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound! I have done the worst thing in the world and God has forgiven me. Praise God! Well then, glad that’s over. The slate is wiped clean, and now I can go back to normal.”

Not so fast. Nathan’s next few words indicate just what is meant by “forgiveness.” He says to David, “You are not going to die.” Death would have been the just penalty. The punishment for adultery was death. The punishment for murder was death. David had committed two capital crimes, either one of which could have justly resulted in his being stoned to death by his fellow Israelites, or being supernaturally extinguished by God – as God did to Onan, Uzzah, Ananais, Sapphira, Herod Agrippa I, etc. David was forgiven in the sense that his life was spared. Neither God nor the Israelites were going to kill him for it. But there were still consequences. Devastating, heart-breaking consequences that would last for decades. In the very next verse, Nathan says to him, “But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”

And that was not the only son born to David who would die before his time. Sometime later David’s son Amnon would violate his half-sister Tamar, and one of David’s other sons, Absalom, would kill him for it. Later on Absalom would rebel against his own father and wage war against him, and die in battle. Later on Solomon would kill another of David’s sons, Adonijah, in a power struggle between those two. If you are keeping track, that’s 4 dead sons of David. The prophet Nathan had said, “The sword will never depart from your own house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own” (2 Samuel 12:10).

When you are tempted to sin (and who is not tempted to sin?), never let creep into your mind the beguiling thought, “God will forgive it. That’s what he does. He won’t even get mad. He never gets mad. He’ll just wipe the slate clean and forget that it ever happened, and we’ll go on as before.” That’s not the way it works. Forgiveness is a lot more sober than that.

Bob Bennett has a wonderful little song – it’s worth looking up - called A Hand of Kindness. In that song he writes,

Forgiveness comes in just a moment.
Sometimes the consequences last.
And it’s hard to walk inside that mercy
When the present is so tied up to the past.

Indeed, the present is tied up to the past, even as the future will be tied up to the present. The sin that you contemplate today, even if forgiven, will tie up your future in irrevocably tragic ways. Moses found that out. David found that out. They both experienced it. And by God’s grace they left a record to instruct us in those truths. Those who maintain that you cannot provoke God to wrath and will suffer no consequences for your sin are false teachers who do not know their Bible and have no business instructing God’s people.

Some might say, "But didn’t this bit about God’s wrath all change when Jesus came?" I know that some people teach that. They will acknowledge that God used to get angry in the Old Testament but once Jesus came and died on the cross that exhausted all the wrath of God, so there is none of it left. Therefore they tell us, “Don’t worry about God’s wrath. It’s over!” Nine years ago today, June 18 of 2014, Pastor R W Glenn of Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka Minnesota tweeted the following: “Christian, you don’t have to fear God’s wrath any more than you have to fear a tornado that happened 2000 years ago!”

You see his point. Tornados are terrifying and destructive, and if one is on the way we take efforts to avoid it. But none of us are afraid of a tornado that happened 2000 years ago. Well, Christian, Pastor Glenn said, “God’s wrath is like that. It expired 2000 years ago at the cross of Christ.” So now you’re free to get up and walk about. Nothing but blue skies ahead for you. Nothing to fear.

Is that what the Bible says? About 25 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Apostle Paul addressed some sinners at the church in Rome, and he said this to them in Romans 2:5-8,

Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what he has done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

A few years later when Paul wrote to the Ephesian church, he said, in Ephesians 5:5-6,

No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.

God’s wrath comes upon the disobedient. Only a fool refuses to fear the wrath of God. Fools like R W Glenn. When he tweeted that we don’t have to fear God’s wrath any more than a 2,000-year-old tornado, he was at that time cheating on his wife. His infidelity was discovered, and in September of that year and he was fired from his church. Thankfully, the last I heard he is no longer in the ministry.

I plead with you not to listen to the lies of R W Glenn, Steve Brown, Joyce Meyer, or that worship director at my friend’s church. If you sin, you better believe God is mad at you. That’s all over the Bible.

Does that mean that all is lost and you’re going to hell? Not necessarily. Not yet anyways. But indeed there are some people who reach a tipping point in their rebellion against God such that no amount of consequences ever get through to them to teach them a lesson. They never get it. They never repent. Revelation 9 speaks of such people. It says that even though they suffered horrible plagues as a judgement of God, verses 20 and 21 say that still they did not repent, still they did not stop worshiping demons, committing murder, or indulging in sexual immorality.

Then there are people who reject the voice of God that calls to them through conscience and nature, and keep rejecting his voice until God says, in effect, “Very well. Have it your way.” That too is an expression of God’s wrath, and we read about it in Romans 1:18 and following. Romans 1:18 says

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Then that passage goes on to say how God’s anger is revealed in such people. It is a matter of them being given over to their sin. It says that 3 times: Verse 24, “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts.” Verse 26, “God gave them over to shameful lusts.” Verse 28, “God gave them over to a depraved mind.”

Beware of ongoing sin. Do not treat it lightly, lest God, in anger, turn you over to it. I have found to my horror that you can often tell when a person has been given over to their sin. It’s when they’re not even ashamed of it. They feel no guilt. They feel no fear. They often regard themselves as victims rather than perpetrators of evil. They’re even proud of their sin.

But as I said, if you have sinned, and God is mad at you, and disciplines you with long-lasting consequences, that is not necessarily the end of the world. It wasn’t for Moses, it wasn’t for David, and it need not be for you. Do what they did. Confess your sin. Repent. Acknowledge that God is holy, and whatever he does is right.

Hebrews 12:5: says “Do not lose heart when God rebukes you.” And it goes on to say that God disciplines those he loves. He punishes his sons and daughters for their own good just as any wise father does to his own children.

I do not know how any of you experience the rebuke and discipline of God. I can tell you how it comes to me. It comes through his Word, the Bible, and faithful preaching from it. That is where I hear God’s holy rebuke, and I know it is good for me. I have very little tolerance for teaching that is showy, entertaining, light on Scripture, designed to make me feel good about myself. I also am revolted by the teaching of men whose personal lives are so chock-full of hypocrisy and wickedness as to make a mockery of whatever good they are trying to say. But when I hear Scripture faithfully explained by humble men of God who stand under its authority – men like D A Carson, James Montgomery Boice, Warren Wiersbe, then I feel those yearnings that make me mourn my sin and desire to be a better man before God.

I close with this. God got angry with Moses and told him that he would not get into Promised Land. I’m sure that broke Moses’ heart. But he accepted it, and acknowledged that God’s way was right. And he died up on the mountain viewing the Promised Land off in the distance.

But his death was not the end of the story. Are you aware that after his death, he got to the Promised Land after all? I don’t mean metaphorically – I mean for real. We see it in Luke chapter 9, the Mount of Transfiguration. Three of Jesus’ disciples, Peter James and John, went up with him to a mountain top where Jesus’ glory was revealed. It was as though, for a brief time, a window opened and heaven broke through on earth. And part of that transcendent experience included appearances by Moses and Elijah. Verses 30 and 31 say this: Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.

Among the many things that could be said about that extraordinary occurrence is this. Though Moses sinned by dishonoring God before all the Israelites, though he provoked God to anger, and though God punished him by prohibiting his entrance into the Promised Land, that punishment was for this life only. It did not carry on into the next. It is as though God said to Moses, “My child, you will someday get to the Promised Land. But it will be after your death. And it will only be in the company of my Son Jesus Christ.”

Let us pray.

Lord God, we sinners acknowledge with sorrow that we have provoked you to your face and invited your righteous anger. By your mercy, do not hand us over to our sin. Soften our hearts to receive the painful lessons of rebuke, and grant us repentance unto life. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Hold before our minds that future joy of beholding the face of Jesus and fellowshipping with him just like our fellow sinners Moses and Elijah. Thank you that Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf can make that happen. Amen.

Scripture texts:

Deuteronomy 3:23-27: At that time I pleaded with the LORD: 24 “Sovereign LORD, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do? 25 Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan—that fine hill country and Lebanon.” 26 But because of you the LORD was angry with me and would not listen to me. “That is enough,” the LORD said. “Do not speak to me anymore about this matter. 27 Go up to the top of Pisgah and look west and north and south and east. Look at the land with your own eyes, since you are not going to cross this Jordan.

Deuteronomy 32:48-52: On that same day the LORD told Moses, 49 “Go up into the Abarim Range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. 50 There on the mountain that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. 51 This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites. 52 Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.”

Hebrews 12:5-6: And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”